Jane Rimmer, Ciara Glennon and Sarah Spiers were all missing in a popular nightlife area in the city of Perth, Western Australia in the 1990s. For nearly 25 years, their unsolved deaths continued to play a major role in the minds of the residents.
In September of this year, after a seven-month trial, Bradley Robert Edwards, 52, was found guilty only of the murder of childcare worker Rimmer, 23, in 1996, and attorney Glennon, 27, in 1997.
He was found not guilty of the murder of Spiers, 18, a secretary whose body was never found, because there was insufficient evidence.
On Wednesday, Edwards was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison before qualifying for parole, the Western Australia Supreme Court confirmed to CNN.
When he delivered the verdict, Judge Stephen Hall of the Western Australia Supreme Court told Edwards he was a “dangerous predator seeking out vulnerable young women.”
“Your actions were pre-meditative, performed with relentless determination, and were relentless in your disdain for the pain and suffering you caused,” Hall said in his condemnation.
Hall said there was a “high chance” that Edwards would die in prison.
What happened
The disappearance of the women aroused widespread fear among the Perth locals.
All three were last seen in the early morning hours after a night out in the affluent suburb of Claremont, an area previously considered safe.
“The fact that three young women disappeared from the streets of Claremont created what has been described as a mystery of the dark,” Hall said in his September judgment when Edwards was found guilty. “That is to say there was a mystery who took the three victims.”
Within weeks of their disappearance, the bodies of Rimmer and Glennon were found in bushland. Both had been killed from a sharp injury to the neck, Hall said in his September judgment.
Spiers was last seen in the early hours of January 27, 1996. Her body has never been found, but there’s nothing to indicate she’s alive, Hall said.
“She must have been kidnapped or murdered, but the circumstances in which she was taken and how she died are unknown,” he added.
The disappearances went unsolved for decades. Then, in 2016, the police broke through.
That year, Edwards was convicted of two rapes and emerged as a suspect in the Claremont murders because of his DNA.
Police linked his DNA to samples taken from under the fingernails of Glennon’s left hand. The prosecution argued that the DNA had likely gotten under her fingernails in a violent battle before her death.
They also said that the fibers found on Rimmer and Glennon’s bodies matched those from Edwards’s company car, indicating that he had abducted both women in that vehicle.
CNN’s Samantha Beech and Angus Watson contributed to the reporting.